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Like many fast-growing areas across the country, the Bluegrass region of central Kentucky is dealing with two complementary growth management issues:
Civic leadership for this critical planning process is provided by Bluegrass Tomorrow, a non-profit, community-based organization formed in 1989 to ensure that the region’s extraordinary resources-physical, natural and fiscal-are soundly managed for the future. Bluegrass Tomorrow works within the seven-county area for solutions that build a strong and efficient economy, a protected environment and livable communities. The organization accomplishes its goals by promoting regional dialogue and collaborative goal-setting among diverse interests, facilitating public, private and corporate sector cooperation, and developing innovative planning solutions to growth and conservation concerns.
The guiding framework for Bluegrass Tomorrow is the Bluegrass Regional Vision that was developed in 1993 through a broad-based regional planning process. In seeking to maintain a clear definition between town and country, this Vision reflects the region’s legacy of a large urban center (Lexington) surrounded by smaller, distinct cities and towns. These communities are separated and yet connected by a beautiful greenbelt of agricultural land and areas rich in environmental and historic resources.
Smart Growth Choices
Continuing a partnership established in the early 1990s, the Lincoln Institute and Bluegrass Tomorrow cosponsored a conference in October that focused on smart growth choices for the region. The conference was designed to bring together public officials, business interests and concerned citizens to revisit the Regional Vision, discuss why that Vision remains important for good business, good cities and a good environment, and to explore how it is being unraveled by current development pressures. Through a combination of keynote addresses, plenary sessions and interactive workshops, participants learned about smart growth principles and evaluated the appropriateness of various approaches and models to their region.
William Hudnut, senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C., discussed the characteristics of smart growth, which are also the goals of the Bluegrass Regional Vision:
The conference program highlighted three smart growth themes, offered illustrative case studies from other regions in the U.S., and provided opportunities for participant feedback on promising directions and possible obstacles.
Planning and Paying for Infrastructure
The Bluegrass region’s ability to create incentives to promote smart growth practices is often limited because local governments are always in the business of playing “catch up.” This creates a problem because of the need for local government to be able to use public infrastructure to promote development in areas appropriate for growth, away from rural conservation areas, and to help in the purchase of development rights to protect the Bluegrass farmland.
Paul Tischler, a fiscal, economic and planning consultant from Bethesda, Maryland, advocated that government use a capital improvement plan to address this problem. This planning tool allows governments to create a comprehensive approach to current and future needs in one integrated program. It establishes goals for what projects are needed and how and when to pay for them. Peter Pollock of the Boulder, Colorado, Planning Department presented a case study of how his city has implemented a capital improvement program that addresses capital facilities planning and budgeting, equity concerns and linkage of service availability to development approval.
Infill Development
Promotion of more intense development and redevelopment within established cities and towns in the Bluegrass is a critical smart growth issue. It encourages more efficient use of the region’s highly valued Bluegrass farmland and makes better use of existing infrastructure. Too often, however, developers are required to reduce the density of development to respond to neighborhood concerns about incompatibility with the existing community character. As a result, land within urban areas is being used less efficiently, which increases the pressure to convert farmland on the edge of developed areas into future home sites.
To address this problem, Nore Winter, an urban design review consultant in Boulder, Colorado, discussed how communities can make sure that infill and redevelopment enhance the community and the quality of life in the surrounding neighborhood. He explained how to avoid “generica” by defining community character and using design guidelines to improve new developments with visual examples that demonstrate the type of development that is preferred. David Rice, executive director of the Norfolk, Virginia, Redevelopment and Housing Authority, shared examples of infill development projects in that city, which has successfully created quality neighborhoods, encouraged community participation and addressed difficult zoning, design and permitting concerns.
Regional Cooperation
The seven central Bluegrass counties constitute a highly integrated region in terms of land use, economy, and natural and cultural resources. Decisions in one county can have a long-term impact on another county. Although Bluegrass Tomorrow has drawn the region together to work on these issues, the current rate of change requires more intensive planning and coordination.
Curtis Johnson, president and chairman of the Metropolitan Council of the Twin Cities area in Minnesota, explored with conference participants many examples of additional steps that can be taken to promote regional cooperation. The good news for the Bluegrass, Johnson noted in his opening observations, is that unlike some regions of the U.S., the Bluegrass is still able to make important choices. He cautioned, though, that any region has only a few opportunities to get it right, and that there is no magic solution. He also offered several succinct ideas about regionalism: “setting a bigger table, including those who disagree,” “it’s never over,” and “no one is excused.”
Next Steps
Conference participants and local community and political leaders who held a follow-up meeting concluded that the region needs to explore seven action steps to build on the ideas generated by the conference speakers and discussion sessions.
1. Encourage communities to put in place a well-communicated and clearly explained capital improvement plan to help build community confidence that government can meet and pay for the needs of local communities and the region as a whole. The plan should match services to regional growth and build consensus among diverse interest groups about which areas are to be designated as urban and which will remain rural.
2. Promote infill development by using a redevelopment authority to build downtown housing, redevelop old strip centers and explore new projects in overlooked urbanized areas.
3. Develop design guidelines for infill and redevelopment projects that work as a friend, not a foe. The guidelines should be developed in partnership with the neighbors to build confidence in the process, remove fear of the unknown, and set a design framework rather than dictate a particular design style.
4. Use Bluegrass farmland as the niche or “brand identity” when marketing the Bluegrass as a location.
5. Educate the business community, especially the lending community, about the reasons for and benefits of smart growth.
6. Address concerns over economic winners and losers in the region, and undertake economic planning accordingly.
7. Build on collaborative regional efforts now in place and the common sense of place in the Bluegrass to strengthen regional planning efforts. This involves taking care to maximize alliances among groups and to balance strategic long-term planning with specific actions.
What will become of these ideas? If the past is any measure, over the next several months the leaders and citizens of the Bluegrass region will sort out which of these ideas will work best, and they will form the coalitions necessary to make them work. Bluegrass Tomorrow will continue to provide a unique model of private sector leadership on smart growth issues in collaboration with the region’s public officials and community residents.
Jean Scott is executive director of Bluegrass Tomorrow, based in Lexington, Kentucky, and Peter Pollock is director of community planning in Boulder, Colorado, and a former visiting fellow of the Lincoln Institute. Together they developed and organized the conference on Smart Growth for the Bluegrass.
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Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 3 del libro Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.
La inversión de fondos públicos en áreas urbanas suele traer como resultado un aumento en el valor de la tierra que solamente beneficia a un grupo pequeño de propietarios privados. En una iniciativa sin precedentes, la ciudad brasileña de Porto Alegre está usando el impuesto a la propiedad como un instrumento para recuperar la plusvalía de los bienes raíces, con lo cual logran frenar la especulación en el mercado inmobiliario y promueven el desarrollo urbano racional.
Contexto económico y social
Porto Alegre es la capital y la ciudad más grande del estado brasileño de Río Grande do Sul, el más meridional del país. Con una población de 1,5 millones de habitantes y aproximadamente 450.000 unidades inmobiliarias en 1994, las autoridades de la ciudad estimaron una escasez de más de 50.000 unidades residenciales. No obstante, los mayores problemas económicos y sociales limitaban la capacidad que tenía la ciudad para proporcionar viviendas a las familias de ingresos bajos y medianos.
Al igual que en muchos países en desarrollo con ciclos económicos inestables, la tierra es uno de los principales medios para acumular riqueza en Brasil. En Porto Alegre, la existencia de grandes predios sin urbanizar cerca del centro de la ciudad propicia la propagación urbana en la periferia. El principal factor causante de esta situación es la especulación con las tierras por parte de propietarios adinerados que poseen grandes extensiones de terreno baldío y esperan un momento favorable para realizar inversiones o vender los terrenos con enormes ganancias.
A medida que las familias de ingresos bajos son empujadas hacia la periferia, su segregación lleva a una exclusión social más acentuada y mayores demandas de servicios. No obstante, la dotación de infraestructura básica, como los servicios de transporte público en rutas largas entre la periferia y los núcleos de comercio, industria o entretenimiento, exige que el gobierno haga inversiones considerables.
Las autoridades de la ciudad de Porto Alegre se habían fijado una meta fundamental de proveer servicios urbanos de calidad para la comunidad de las afueras, entre ellos una infraestructura básica, educación, transporte público, limpieza de calles y seguridad. Sin embargo, un diagnóstico financiero de los ingresos de la ciudad hizo que las autoridades se percataran de la escasez de recursos para tal inversión. En contraste, muchos distritos en áreas más centrales estaban bien dotados de infraestructura, equipos y servicios, y su densidad de población era menor a la prevista en el plan de desarrollo urbano de la ciudad.
Era obvio que la especulación obstaculizaba el desarrollo de la tierra, pero las autoridades gobernantes creían que el ambiente político era favorable para un cambio. Después de un período en el que el gobierno se enfrentó a una inflación crónica en Brasil, se introdujo un programa de estabilización económica en julio de 1994. Antes del plan económico, la inflación anual llegó a alcanzar el asombroso nivel del 7.000 por ciento. A partir de la aplicación del plan, el índice promedio de la inflación mensual osciló entre el 0,7 y el 1,7 por ciento. La medición de la economía en términos del producto interno bruto (PIB) arrojó índices positivos de crecimiento anual a partir de 1993. El gobierno local tenía confianza en que el momento era ideal para recuperar la inversión y las actividades productivas que se habían paralizado durante el anterior período de inflación alta.
En resumen, los siguientes factores fomentaron la iniciativa de Porto Alegre de usar el impuesto a la propiedad como instrumento para simultáneamente recuperar la plusvalía de la tierra, refrenar la especulación en el mercado inmobiliario y promover la justicia social y el crecimiento económico:
Medidas gubernamentales
La constitución de Brasil (1988) define el impuesto a la propiedad como un tributo aplicado a la tierra e inmuebles urbanos y especifica que puede utilizarse como un instrumento de las políticas urbanas a fin de promover un uso racional de la tierra que genere beneficios sociales para toda la comunidad. Esta disposición permitió que Porto Alegre emprendiera las siguientes acciones:
Efectividad de la iniciativa
La legislación fue promulgada a finales de 1993 y el gobierno comenzó a aplicarla en 1994. La propuesta contó con el apoyo de los miembros del Ayuntamiento, tanto los pertenecientes al partido de gobierno como los de la oposición; esta instancia tiene la responsabilidad de aprobar las decisiones en materia de legislación municipal.
A la fecha de octubre de 1997 la iniciativa no ha dado los resultados esperados. Sólo se han desarrollado cinco de los 120 predios vacantes. Los propietarios de 50 inmuebles están pagando el impuesto a la propiedad con una tasa de aumento progresivo. Tres de las propiedades fueron eliminadas de la lista porque habían sido incluidas incorrectamente desde un principio debido a registros inexactos sobre sus características físicas.
No se ha descrito el estado de desarrollo de las 62 propiedades restantes. Algunas pertenecen a terratenientes acaudalados y políticamente influyentes que apelaron ante el Tribunal Supremo contra la constitucionalidad de las medidas aplicadas por el gobierno de la ciudad. De hecho, dos terratenientes (A y B) que poseen casi el 44 por ciento de los terrenos baldíos están apelando y otros terratenientes aparentemente están a la espera de la decisión judicial para tomar sus propias decisiones. (Véase el cuadro.)
Solamente será posible evaluar la efectividad que ha tenido la iniciativa del impuesto a la propiedad en Porto Alegre después de que se conozcan las decisiones judiciales sobre la materia, pero otros beneficios cruciales derivados de la experiencia ya han garantizado su éxito. La legislación ha dado lugar a un debate intenso en el ámbito nacional y local sobre los derechos políticos y privados, los derechos de propiedad y los intereses públicos. La experiencia también ha servido como ejemplo para que otras autoridades gobernantes tomen conciencia de la responsabilidad que tienen de fomentar el uso racional de las tierras urbanas.
En Brasil, los factores culturales y económicos parecen seguir propiciando la especulación con la tierra, en detrimento de las actividades productivas, y la dificultad para establecer límites entre los intereses públicos y los derechos privados es, sin duda, compleja. No obstante, los esfuerzos iniciales realizados en Porto Alegre representan un paso decisivo hacia el control de la especulación privada y el fomento del desarrollo urbano responsable. Otras iniciativas similares en otros lugares ahora tienen mayores posibilidades de convertirse en alternativas viables para lograr justicia en la distribución de los recursos públicos con ventajas sociales para la comunidad.
Claudia M. De Cesare trabaja para la Municipalidad de Porto Alegre y está postulada para cursar un doctorado en el Centre for the Built and Human Environment, de la Universidad de Salford, Inglaterra.
Land use planning involves intertemporal decisionmaking—the consideration of a subsequent decision before a first decision is made. Decisions in the urban development process include the purchase, assembly or subdivision of land; the provision of transportation, electric, water and wastewater services; the application for and approval of building permits; and the sale of improved property to final users.
The ability to analyze this process has been limited by the lack of dynamic models of development stages, time-series data on land use decisionmaking, and empirical approaches to analyzing multiple events in time and space. In part for these reasons, there has been almost no empirical evidence on the process of planning or the effects of plans on subsequent development.
To gain new insights into the effects of planning on the urban development process, we have developed theoretical models of urban planning, constructed a dynamic geographic information system, and developed computer algorithms for interpreting and displaying urban development events. The information system is characterized by a high degree of spatial and temporal resolution and the ability to observe development activity over time.
As a result, the information system facilitates the observation of spatial and dynamic processes that characterize urban development, the formation and testing of hypotheses about such processes, and the exercise of high-resolution simulations based on statistically confirmed relationships.
Study Site on Portland’s Westside Corridor
The information system is built upon the Regional Land Information System (RLIS) developed by Metro, the regional government of Portland, Oregon. RLIS is a comprehensive Geographic Information System (GIS) containing layers that depict tax lots and their attributes; planning designations and zoning regulations; soil, water and environmental resources; infrastructure facilities and capacities; government boundaries, tax districts and transportation zones; and census data for the entire Portland metropolitan area.
RLIS has been enhanced to include attributes of development events, such as land sales, subdivisions, and changes in plan designations and zoning. Although the system currently includes only the years 1991 to 1995, it is an unusually comprehensive, high-resolution, and dynamic research and planning tool.
To test the utility of the information system, we examined the urban development process in Portland’s Westside corridor, where a new light rail system is scheduled to begin service in 1998. Construction of the Westside segment began in 1992, and the far western station locations were finalized on July 28, 1993. When complete, the Westside line will connect the western suburbs of Hillsboro and Beaverton to downtown Portland and to the eastern sections of the light rail system.
Ambitious plans for the metropolitan area call for high-density development along Portland’s light rail corridors to contain growth within the urban growth boundary. By focusing on the Westside corridor, it is possible to evaluate whether the development decisions and transactions of land owners and local governments are influenced by anticipated light rail infrastructure investments and consistent with regional development plans.
Mapping the Development Process
The development process can be examined using dynamic geographic visualization—that is, the observation of urban development events at varying temporal and geographic scales. Using a tax-lot base map, for example, and by illuminating tax lots when certain events occur in a sequence of frames, it is possible to watch the urban development process much like a movie. The sequence of frames printed in this issue of Land Lines illustrates selected development activities from 1991 to 1995 in an approximately one-square-mile area around the proposed Orenco light rail station. Since it is difficult to reproduce the frames here, please go directly to the authors’ web page for mapping details at http://www.urban.uiuc.edu/projects/portland/lincoln.html
The first frame shows the sale of several large industrial properties in 1991, when the route of the rail line was known, but not the station location. In 1992, a demolition and construction permit was issued on a large industrial parcel. The third frame shows the station location, with development on industrial land near the station and increasing sales activity in the subdivision in the northwest corner of the study area.
The fourth frame shows that a station overlay zone was adopted in 1994. It subjected building permits in the station area to a special review process to assure that proposed developments are transit supportive. The frame also shows a marked increase in residential sales in the northwest subdivision and in the old town of Orenco in the inner southeast corner of the study area. The fifth frame shows a continuation of sales and development activity in both residential and industrial parts of the study area.
This series of frames captures an intriguing pattern of development events. First, the number of sales and permits in the study area before the announcement of the station location suggests that the station was sited in an area of active industrial development. Second, the activity in both the conventional subdivision in the northwest corner and in the township of Orenco indicates that the announcement of the station location accelerated nearby residential development activity.
Third, the demolitions approved just before and the building permits approved just after the station location was announced suggest that redevelopment of industrial land near the station is concurrent with the building of the light rail system. Such concurrency of private and public development activity is a fundamental objective of land use planning. Finally, the imposition of the interim development restrictions does not appear to have slowed the rate of development activity. In fact, the increased certainty about the regulatory environment may have increased activity.
This five-year display of development events may be unique to the Orenco station area. Certainly, previous land use plans, sewer system investments and industrial expansion patterns have influenced development in the area. Nevertheless, the ability to track parcel-by-parcel activity in the county-wide database will enable in-depth examination of the extent to which dynamic and spatial relationships between development events and land use plans are significant and pervasive.
The regional and local governments of metropolitan Portland are engaged in an extensive planning endeavor to shape the extent, location and nature of urban development over the next four decades. As implementation proceeds, the information system will enable us to monitor the planning, regulation and development process and, for at least this metropolitan area, assess whether and how planning matters.
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The authors are affiliated with the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Chengri Ding is a post-doctoral fellow specializing in the use of geographical information systems for urban economic analysis. Lewis Hopkins is professor and head of the department. Gerrit Knaap is associate professor, currently on sabbatical as a visiting fellow at the Center for Urban Policy and the Environment at Indiana University and a senior research fellow at the American Planning Association. Support for their research has been provided by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; the University of Illinois Research Board; the Metro of Portland, Oregon; Washington County, Oregon; the Tri-county Transportation District of Portland, Oregon; and the National Science Foundation.
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For the past several years, the Lincoln Institute has been collaborating with the Loeb Fellowship Program based at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design. The program was established in 1970 through the generosity of Harvard alumnus John L. Loeb to allow mid-career professionals to study independently and gain additional tools to help revitalize the built and natural environment. The 2001-2002 Loeb Fellows took their end-of-the-year class trip to Cuba in mid-June, including two days in Santiago de Cuba and four in Havana, with a side trip from Havana to Trinidad and destinations in between.
With its neoclassical facades, white cobbles, Caribbean clouds and pastel paint, Trinidad is frozen in time like a watercolor postcard. Because Cuba’s architectural heritage is the focus of growing international attention and it’s not threatened by waves of new construction, the future of the past seems assured. The future itself is much more difficult to find. As our Loeb Fellowship group searched for clues in three cities and parts of the countryside, we found that despite economic stagnation and international political tension Cubans are hard at work on a future that is uniquely theirs.
An influx of tourist dollars and an aggressive, uniquely Cuban preservation campaign have begun to seize the riches of Old Havana from the jaws of benign neglect. After at least one bad experience with new construction, the Office of the City Historian, which coordinates the impressive large-scale restoration and revitalization of Old Havana, is still grappling with the problem of integrating the new with the historic. One way of addressing the problem is to closely oversee the design of block-sized developments. We walked by one large, modern parking structure inside Old Havana that will be rebuilt as a multi-use building, with parking beside it, according to a design intended to replicate the scale and some of the monumental features of a colonial convent that once stood on the site. Although some residents are being relocated here and elsewhere, many are returning to their homes after their neighborhoods are rehabilitated.
Now considered a model for financing rehabilitation efforts in other districts of the city, the renewal of Old Havana is based on a system of taxes and joint ventures that includes revenues from the private enterprises profiting from restoration-related tourism. The Office’s US$50 million-per-year budget is divided between construction and social supports for Cubans living within the boundaries of the rehabilitation zone. This can be thought of as a system of “value capture,” long a topic of interest at the Lincoln Institute.
Julio César Pérez, a Cuban architect, urban designer and advocate for community-based planning, was a member of our Loeb Fellowship class. With his special perspective as a local practitioner, he showed our group some favorite examples among the rich legacy of pre-revolutionary Deco and Modern architecture in Havana. Five-story gems are set among the very mixed cityscape of central Havana, which also includes the 28-story Edificio Focsa, with its 375 apartment units, built in the twilight of the Batista years.
On the heels of the international style housing blocks and casinos of the 1950s, the revolution brought its own form of land use revision. Julio told a story of Che Guevara and Fidel Castro playing a game of congratulatory post-revolution golf on the vast green of the former Havana Country Club. “How can we make good use of this land?” they mused, according to the legend. The results of their conversation are the grandly metaphoric and mostly unfinished National Schools of Art designed by Ricardo Porro, Vittorio Garratti and Roberto Gottardi. Their stance is deliberately indifferent to the clubhouse or the plan of the golf course, treating the open area as if it were a large meadow in the wilderness. The buildings are slated for restoration, a project made more complicated by poor siting and hydrological problems.
Julio also singled out more recent examples of large-scale construction in Havana, such as the Melia Cohiba Hotel with its bulky, corporate arch and the Miramar Trade Center, a commercial (dollar) mall across the street. These expensive projects are not only design failures, but also miss the relationship of the site with the sea and the possibility for creating a new quality of place in a developing district.
With the stalled economy and international stalemate of the 1990s, Cuban architect and planner Miguel Coyula and his colleagues have made use of the time and materials at hand to take a more thoughtful approach to land use and development. While vertical cities of steel and glass are popping up on a fast track and enormous scale in cities around the world, one of the world’s largest scale city models is being built out of discarded cigar boxes in Havana. This breathtaking miniature landscape was conceived as an aid to planning and an anchor for the efforts of the Group for the Integrated Development of the Capital (GDIC), which has been advising the city government on planning matters since 1988.
The 1:1000 model of greater Havana has been evolving piece by fitted piece for most of the last decade, and now covers 112 square meters or about a quarter of a basketball court. The model is housed in a specially designed, daylight-filled pavilion in the Mirarmar area near the center of the city, where drop-in visitors can circulate around and above the model on the broad floor and ramping mezzanine levels. Scale models of virtually every structure in the city are mounted on the wood topographical base. The buildings are color-coded to show development at different stages in history: colonial, pre-revolutionary modern (1900-1958) and post-revolutionary.
Miguel describes one construction project, a high-rise for the Committee for Economic Collaboration (CECE), which was cancelled because the model showed it was clearly out of scale for its location in central Havana. The decision seems to be a milestone because it was a very real project and also symbolic of a determination to build with environmental sensitivity—despite pressures to accommodate foreign investors in cash-strapped Cuba.
The primary mission of the GDIC is intimately familiar to Americans involved in planning inside major cities: start with neighborhoods. The group has run a series of “neighborhood transformation workshops” for local residents guided by professional designers and planners, selected from the same area when possible. These projects capture the spirit of the international community design movement, a 45-year-old, U.S.-linked tradition in which designers work directly in the interest of area residents. Since both the hard times of the post-Soviet 1990s and the U.S. embargo began taking their huge economic toll on Cuba, these workshops have gained in significance. They have brought planning and economic development together in a new local context, with neighborhoods tackling projects like urban farming and manufacturing building materials from recycled rubble.
The neighborhood transformation workshops and similar initiatives over the last 20 years have helped to bridge the Cuban revolutionary imperative of equal treatment for all and the very human imperative of making decisions about family, community and daily life. Another example is Architects for the Community, a national civic sector community design practice involved in town construction and environmental planning as well as low-fee design services for individual families. Built on the theories of Argentinean architect Rodolfo Livingston, the practice promotes a direct relationship between the user and the architect while building sustainability and contextual sensitivity into each construction project. Julio worked with the practice for five years before coming to Harvard and he presented a paper with Kathleen Dorgan, another member of the Loeb class, at the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture conference in Cuba last spring. As an advocate for more humane and thoughtful land use and building design in his country, Julio is among a number of Cuban architects concerned with traditional values of craft and environmentally appropriate design.
Considering efforts like these, there is hope for a future of construction based on a fine calibration of scale, carefully considered relationships between built fabric and natural features of the surroundings, as well as the comfort and pleasure of the users. The challenge is to find the economic and regulatory means to support appropriate construction. So far, the state has maintained control of land use through direct and almost exclusive ownership, negotiating leases for some private and foreign investment through a delicate and extremely tenuous web of economic and legal formulas for valuing the parcels involved. As the economy becomes tied to the influx of outside currencies, these leases are likely to evolve into more predictable and transparent transactions. Perhaps land sales and heftier taxation are not far behind.
With the coming of foreign investment and the pressures to open up to even more, there will be ample opportunity in the future to be hijacked by land use decisions that are driven by the profit margins of distant organizations, and that would be an unfortunate addition to Cuba’s historic burden. Because, despite the beauty of its landscapes and cityscapes, Cuba is a map of victimization—by colonial conquest, crass economic exploitation, revolutionary confrontation, and brutal Soviet-style development.
The Loeb Fellows got an overview of intense nationalism built upon a deep and diverse culture, cosmopolitan history and the very real achievements of the last 40 years. Cuba is a place of great hardship and also enormous potential, for Cubans and for the rest of the world. We hope that the future does not hold only exploitation and cultural degradation when the barriers to trade and international travel finally fall. We also hope to show that Cuba is a place to learn from the mistakes of the past—theirs and ours—and to find out what is possible when a people are free to protect, respect and enhance their environment.
For more information about the Loeb Fellowship Program, see the website at www.gsd.harvard.edu/loebfell.
Loeb Fellows, 2001-2002
Kathleen Dorgan
Architect and community designer, Storrs, Connecticut
Clair Enlow
Journalist, Seattle
Kathleen Fox
Director, Ohio Arts and Sports Facilities Commission, Columbus.
James Grauley
President, Bank of America’s Community Development Corporation, Atlanta
Seitu Jones
Public artist, Minneapolis
Rick Lowe
Public artist and founder, Project Rowe Houses, Houston
Rubén Martínez
Writer, Los Angeles, and professor of non-fiction writing, University of Houston
Julio César Pérez
Architect, urban planner and professor, Faculty of Architecture, Havana
Virginia Prescott
Radio journalist and interactive media specialist, National Public Radio, New York and Boston
Richard St. John
Director, Conversations for the Common Wealth, Pittsburgh
Marina Stankovic
Architect, Berlin
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Gerrit-Jan Knaap is an economist, professor of urban studies and planning, and executive director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education at the University of Maryland, in College Park. His research interests include the economics and politics of land use planning, the efficacy of economic development instruments, and the impacts of environmental policy. His research in Oregon, Maryland and elsewhere has made him a recognized expert on land use policy and planning. He is the coauthor or editor of several books, including two published by the Lincoln Institute: The Regulated Landscape: Lessons on State Land Use Planning from Oregon (1992); and Land Market Monitoring for Smart Urban Growth (2001).
Land Lines: As director of the National Center for Smart Growth Research and Education, what land policy issues are you addressing now?
Gerrit-Jan Knaap: This Center has been in existence for only three years, but this year it is finally getting established and recognized. In the past year we have been able to pull together a core group of national and international researchers who are now working in three key areas: land use and environment; transportation and public health; and international urban development. The Center is also recruiting a faculty researcher to concentrate on housing and community development.
LL: What are the Center’s most difficult challenges?
GK: Ironically, the Center’s name is a problem. While the phrase “smart growth” is helpful shorthand for describing an approach to land use planning and management, some people identify the term with liberal causes or with former Maryland Governor Parris Glendening or the Clinton-Gore administration. As a result, the phrase has been politicized in a way that causes confusion and polarized reactions. The Center does not support or oppose smart growth; it is just an adjective modifying what we do: research and education.
We have found, however, that it is more difficult to obtain funding for objective research on growth management and planning issues than it is to obtain funding for activities that advocate either for or against smart growth. The Lincoln Institute’s willingness to fund independent, objective, high-quality research in this field fills an important niche.
LL: What are some of the Center’s most significant projects?
GK: We are doing a lot of work to develop quantitative measures of urban form. We are not alone in this enterprise, but we think we’re still a step ahead of other research centers in applying such measures to policy issues. Reid Ewing, a nationally recognized expert on growth management, community development and traffic management, recently joined the staff. He and others, for example, have developed a sprawl index that they use to explore the relationship between sprawl and obesity, which is part of our public health focus.
Yan Song, a former post-doctoral fellow in the Center and now an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina, developed quantitative measures of urban form and used them to explore whether Portland, Oregon, was winning the battle against urban sprawl. She also used them to determine whether characteristics like street network connectivity, residential density, land use mix and pedestrian accessibility to commercial uses were capitalized into property values. Most recently, she has used the measures to classify neighborhoods into clusters with similar design characteristics as a means of classifying the types of neighborhood that are currently being built.
Another major focus of our work is land policy and growth management in the People’s Republic of China. As a result of recent economic growth and reforms, China’s 1.3 billion people are urbanizing at an astonishing rate, creating an unprecedented growth management challenge. The Chinese are struggling to find a way to accommodate urban growth and, at the same time, preserve their ability to feed their people. Though we certainly do not have all the answers, Chinese scholars and public officials are interested in learning from our experiences in confronting and balancing these challenges. Chengri Ding, another member of the Center’s faculty, is leading this work with support from the Lincoln Institute. He and Yan Song are editing a book on the evolution of land and housing markets in China that will be published by the Institute later this year.
Our third major focus area is land market monitoring, which grew out of my work in Oregon. Land market monitoring is based on the idea that urban growth management is partly an inventory problem: too much land can lead to urban sprawl, but too little land may create land and housing price inflation. Maintaining balance requires accurate and timely information about land supplies, development capacity, land and housing prices, natural resource constraints and urban development demands. We have conducted several workshops around the country on land market monitoring, and now we are working with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Lincoln Institute to establish a national demonstration project.
LL: How did you develop this concept of land market monitoring?
GK: It started with my dissertation work on the price effects of the urban growth boundary (UGB) in Portland, Oregon. Later, at the University of Illinois, Lew Hopkins and I worked on a project we called, “Does Planning Matter?” We sought to develop planning support systems that not only helped to improve land use decision making, but also helped identify the effects of land use plans and regulations on urban development patterns (Ding, Hopkins and Knaap 1997). Building on this work, I organized a conference at the Lincoln Institute in Cambridge in 2000 and invited a group of leading scholars to present papers on this issue. These papers were published by the Institute in the book Land Market Monitoring for Smart Urban Growth, which was recently translated into Chinese. The idea of measuring development capacity and the need for housing is actually as old as planning itself, but recent advances in GIS technology and digital data bases makes it possible to monitor development capacity on a nearly continuous basis.
LL: How are these ideas being used by planners in the U.S.?
GK: Well, to a large extent, they are not. Typical planning practice in the U.S. still involves the formulation of a comprehensive plan—usually for a 10- to 20-year period—then implementing the plan, and then, after 5 to 10 years, formulating a new plan. With a land market monitoring system it is possible to shorten this cycle considerably. In the extreme, it is conceptually possible to monitor development capacity and urban development trends on a continuous basis and make adjustments as needed. Most planners, however, are not trained to think about growth management issues in this way.
LL: What are the obstacles to using land market monitoring in different locales?
GK: The major obstacles are: (1) the lack of quality data; (2) the lack of intergovernmental cooperation; and (3) the lack of political will to place this issue high on the agenda. The primary problem is not money. To do land market monitoring correctly requires a certain level of resource commitment, but since virtually every local government is developing GIS data and has the necessary technical capacity, it is not difficult to develop an operational monitoring system.
There are some positive examples, however. Monitoring of some kind has been required in Oregon for many years; for this reason, Metro, the regional government for the Portland metropolitan area, has developed an extensive monitoring system (Knaap, Bolen and Seltzer 2003). In its Growing Smart Guidebook, the American Planning Association recommends that any local government that adopts an urban growth boundary also should develop a land monitoring system. Most recently, Maryland Governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. signed an executive order that will initiate a pilot program of land market monitoring in five cities and five counties, and I will serve on the task force that oversees that demonstration project.
LL: What are your plans for the future?
GK: We have two demonstration projects under way. In the first, we are working with the Maryland Department of Planning to develop a series of indicators to assess the progress of the state’s Smart Growth program. These indicators will measure development capacity as well as housing starts and prices, acres of land protected from development, vehicle miles traveled, transit ridership and other trends that will help state officials and the public judge the effectiveness of smart growth policies.
Second, we have just completed phase one of a national demonstration project that was jointly funded by HUD, the Federal Highway Administration and the Lincoln Institute. We identified a generic protocol for conducting a development capacity analysis, applied this protocol to 15 counties in Maryland, and held workshops on monitoring in several metropolitan areas around the country. With Zorica Nedovic-Budic, we also conducted an assessment of the capacity of regional governments to use GIS for land use and transportation planning (see http://www.urban.uiuc.edu/faculty/budic/W-metroGIS.htm). We hope to begin the second phase of that project early in 2004 in five selected sites around the country. Phase two will focus first on residential development capacity, then on employment development capacity, then on how to tie together land use forecasting with transportation planning.
We’re also exploring the possibility of setting up a land market monitoring demonstration project in China, in conjunction with the Lincoln Institute’s new China program.
LL: So where does smart growth go next?
GK: What will happen to the expression “smart growth” is difficult to say. Governor Ehrlich has started calling his version of Maryland’s land use program “Priority Places,” but all of the newspapers still refer to his effort as smart growth. So, it remains to be seen whether the phrase becomes part of the national lexicon or fades like the Macarena. There is no doubt, however, that the issues associated with the term “smart growth” will not go away, in Maryland, around the country, or even overseas. We think this Center is now well-positioned to become an important and objective source of information and education on these issues well into the future.
References
Ding, Chengri, Lewis Hopkins and Gerrit Knaap. 1997. Does Planning Matter? Visual Examination of Urban Development Events. Land Lines 9(1): 4-5.
Knaap, Gerrit, Richard Bolen, and Ethan Seltzer. 2003. Metro’s Regional Land Information System: The Virtual Key to Portland’s Growth Management Success. Lincoln Institute Working Paper.
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Una versión más actualizada de este artículo está disponible como parte del capítulo 7 del CD-ROM Perspectivas urbanas: Temas críticos en políticas de suelo de América Latina.
Diego Alfonso Erba es un profesor invitado del Lincoln Institute of Land Policy (Instituto Lincoln de Políticas de Suelo), con licencia de su cargo de profesor del Programa de Graduados de Geología de la Universidade do Vale do Río dos Sinos (UNISINOS) de Brasil. Se graduó de ingeniero agrimensor en la Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Argentina, y después obtuvo dos títulos de maestría en ciencias y enseñó en varias universidades de Brasil. Su experiencia profesional inicial fue en la regularización de los asentamientos informales de Santa Fe, Argentina, y encabezó el Departamento de Sistemas de Información Geológica (SIG) de una cooperativa agrícola del sur de Brasil. También obtuvo un doctorado en agrimensura de la Universidad Nacional de Catamarca, Argentina, e hizo investigaciones posdoctorales en SIG para cuerpos de agua en el Centro de Recursos Naturales de la Universidad Shiga de Otsu, Japón; y en SIG para aplicaciones urbanas en los Laboratorios Clark-IDRISI de la Universidad Clark de Worcester, Massachusetts.
Land Lines: ¿Qué es un catastro territorial?
Diego Erba: La institución del catastro territorial no existe en los Estados Unidos, por lo menos no de la misma forma que en muchos otros países del mundo. Si bien el término “catastro” tiene más de un significado, en general hay consenso de que proviene del griego catastichon, que se puede traducir como “una lista de parcelas tributarias”.
Este tipo de lista existe en los Estados Unidos, pero el perfil de las instituciones que manejan estos datos no es el mismo que en América Latina y muchos otros países europeos y africanos, donde el catastro territorial incluye datos económicos, geométricos y legales de las parcelas de tierra, además de datos sobre sus dueños u ocupantes. Las instituciones que manejan estos datos, con frecuencia también llamadas catastros territoriales, están estrechamente conectadas con los registros de títulos o los registros de propiedades, porque sus datos se complementan y garantizan el derecho a la tenencia de la tierra. Estas conexiones tradicionales reflejan la herencia catastral histórica de los sistemas legales romano y napoleónico.
Land Lines: ¿Por qué los administradores públicos urbanos necesitan saber sobre los catastros territoriales?
DE: El catastro y el registro de propiedades deberían estar conectados por razones legales − y además con fines prácticos − y hay muchos modelos que demuestran cómo los catastros podrían o deberían estar relacionados con las instituciones públicas. Desafortunadamente, en general los catastros de las distintas regiones están aislados o no están integrados, lo cual reduce mucho su utilidad potencial como herramienta para la planificación urbana y las políticas de suelo.
Por ejemplo, los asentamientos irregulares en general se construyen en áreas públicas o de protección ambiental, o incluso en parcelas privadas, y no pagan impuestos ni están inscritos en las bases de datos de los catastros territoriales. Estas áreas se representan en la cartografía catastral como “polígonos en blanco”, como si no existiera nada dentro de ellos. La paradoja es que en general se poseen datos e información cartográfica sobre estos asentamientos irregulares, pero la información se encuentra frecuentemente en instituciones que no están relacionadas con el catastro, y por lo tanto estos asentamientos no están oficialmente registrados.
Hay una percepción creciente de la importancia del catastro como sistema de información multifinalitario: que sirve no sólo a los sectores legales y financieros de una ciudad, sino también a todas las instituciones que conforman la “realidad urbana”, como las agencias de servicios públicos, las compañías de servicios públicos e incluso ciertos proveedores privados de servicios urbanos. No obstante, esta evolución hacia un concepto nuevo, y hacia sistemas de información urbana mejorados, no ha sido sencilla, y se ha topado con resistencias en los países en desarrollo.
Land Lines: ¿Por qué es tan difícil establecer y usar un catastro multifinalitario?
DE: La implementación de un catastro multifinalitario exige en general un mayor intercambio horizontal de información entre las instituciones gubernamentales. A menudo, también exige una modificación del marco legal y el establecimiento de relaciones más fluidas entre agentes públicos y privados, para poder compartir datos estandarizados y asegurar las inversiones constantes necesarias para mantener actualizadas las bases de datos y la cartografía.
Esto parece ser un proceso sencillo, pero en la práctica no lo es, porque muchos administradores todavía consideran que “esos datos son míos” y no están dispuestos a colaborar con otros. Al mismo tiempo, algunos administradores demasiado entusiastas, convencidos del valor potencial de un catastro multifinalitario, a veces se saltan etapas y pasan de un catastro tradicional a un modelo multifinalitario, sin prestar demasiada atención a la implementación efectiva de los intercambios de información.
Aun cuando operen en forma privada, los catastros territoriales se consideran como un servicio público, así que dependen del financiamiento público y de decisiones políticas para aprobar un nuevo sistema de valuación de la tierra o la cartografía. Al mismo tiempo, este tipo de servicio público no es visible y por lo tanto no es tan interesante para los políticos, que quieren demostrar sus logros por medio de proyectos más tangibles, como un puente o una escuela nueva.
La actualización de los datos catastrales afecta el valor de la tierra y consecuentemente el monto de los impuestos sobre la propiedad, un tema que no es popular con los votantes. No obstante, los administradores gubernamentales que desean mejorar el estado tributario de su jurisdicción pueden decidir al principio de su mandato que quieren actualizar el catastro para tratar de aumentar los ingresos provenientes de los impuestos sobre la propiedad. Esto tiene un impacto político significativo al comenzar su mandato, pero es posible que de allí en más no se alteren los datos del valor de la propiedad por muchos años, resultando cada vez menos precisos en comparación con su valor real de mercado. En muchas jurisdicciones latinoamericanas, la legislación impone la obligación de actualizar el catastro en forma periódica, aunque el nivel de cumplimiento no es homogéneo.
Otro error frecuente es considerar que la solución estriba en crear un sistema de información geográfica (SIG) para manejar los datos catastrales. En el caso ideal, nos gustaría ver sistemas integrados que usan bases de datos coordinadas y estandarizadas. Sin embargo, algunas municipalidades no tienen los recursos suficientes, y aquéllas que los tienen no cuentan con empleados con la preparación suficiente como para realizar la tarea. La noción de que se puede arribar a una manera única de implementar catastros no es realmente práctica en regiones donde las diferencias entre jurisdicciones son tan significativas. Yo siempre digo que el problema con las instituciones catastrales no es de recursos físicos ni de recursos de software, sino de recursos humanos. Aun cuando existan los recursos financieros, la falta de profesionales y técnicos capacitados presenta un obstáculo significativo.
Land Lines: En este contexto, ¿es posible considerar un catastro multifinalitario para América Latina?
DE: Es posible, pero el concepto es todavía nuevo y no se comprende por completo. Hay muchos buenos catastros en América Latina, por ejemplo en algunas municipalidades de Colombia y Brasil y en algunos estados de México y Argentina. En algunas jurisdicciones, la fusión de catastros territoriales con instituciones públicas y sistemas geotecnológicos genera institutos catastrales que están mejor estructurados en términos de presupuesto y personal técnico, y por lo tanto pueden identificar mejor los asentamientos ilegales y controlar el aumento del valor de la tierra usando herramientas modernas.
No obstante, desde mi punto de vista, la región aún no cuenta con un catastro multifinalitario en plena operación. Una suposición común es que la implementación de un catastro multifinalitario exige el agregado de datos sociales y ambientales a las bases de datos alfanuméricas existentes de los catastros territoriales tradicionales, para tener en cuenta los aspectos económicos, geométricos y legales de la parcela y después conectar todos los datos con un mapa de parcela en SIG. Si bien esto es muy importante, no es esencial, porque la implementación no es tanto un problema tecnológico como filosófico. La mayoría de las administraciones municipales se resisten a combinar instituciones que tradicionalmente manejan bases de datos sociales (educación y salud), del medio ambiente y territoriales (catastros) bajo el mismo techo.
Land Lines: ¿Cómo ayuda su trabajo en el Instituto Lincoln a ampliar el nivel de conocimiento sobre los catastros territoriales?
DE: He estado trabajando con el Programa para América Latina y el Caribe desde 2002, para explorar la relación entre los catastros multifinalitarios y las cuatro áreas temáticas del Programa: grandes proyectos urbanos; valuación y tributación de la tierra; asentamientos informales y programas de regularización; y recuperación de plusvalías. Es siempre un desafío adaptar los programas de estudio educativos, pero creemos firmemente que es importante compartir los conocimientos de manera amplia en cada país y preparar a los funcionarios públicos y a los técnicos con distintos niveles de experiencia. Los participantes en nuestros programas académicos, que incluyen a administradores de catastro, planificadores urbanos, abogados y emprendedores inmobiliarios, adoptan un lenguaje y una visión común de las aplicaciones catastrales urbanas, y pueden iniciar un proceso para mejorar el sistema en sus propios países.
Nuestra estrategia pedagógica para este año incluye la diseminación de conocimientos por medio de una combinación de educación a distancia y cursos tradicionales en el aula a distintos niveles. Tenemos pensado desarrollar seminarios de capacitación, seguidos de un curso de educación a distancia adaptado a aquellos países que demuestren las condiciones necesarias para concretar esta nueva visión de un catastro multifinalitario. Finalmente, organizaremos una clase regional en el aula para los mejores estudiantes a distancia en tres países vecinos.
Este plan contrasta con los múltiples programas de capacitación ofrecidos por otras instituciones internacionales, que contemplan conceptos y el uso de herramientas que pueden no ser aplicables en países con distintos marcos legales y niveles tecnológicos. Comenzaremos este ciclo con seminarios en Chile y Perú, trabajando con la Asociación Chilena de Municipalidades y el Instituto de Economía Regional y Gobierno Local en Arequipa, Perú. Éstos y otros socios en América Latina se han comprometido a difundir y aumentar la capacidad local sobre estos temas.
Otro componente de nuestra estrategia es la difusión de materiales didácticos. Más adelante en 2006, publicaremos dos libros sobre conceptos e implementación de catastros que se pueden aplicar a la mayoría de los países. Uno de los libros describe en detalle el sistema catastral de cada país latinoamericano, y el otro conceptualiza los aspectos jurídicos, económicos, geométricos, ambientales y sociales del catastro multifinalitario, realzando la relación entre el catastro territorial y las cuatro áreas temáticas del Programa para América Latina y el Caribe del Instituto Lincoln.
En 2005 produjimos un DVD, que en la actualidad se ofrece en español y portugués. Incluye un documental sobre catastros multifinalitario y algunos segmentos grabados de clases y discusiones sobre las relaciones entre el catastro multifinalitario y asuntos urbanos complejos.
Land Lines: ¿Cuál es el objetivo a largo plazo del catastro multifinalitario?
DE: Los problemas que se han señalado aquí no deberían desalentar el esfuerzo de los administradores urbanos por reorganizar sus catastros y el marco legal de sus políticas de la tierra en sus respectivos ciudades y países. Por el contrario, deberían tratar de cambiar esta realidad desarrollando nuevas leyes que demuestren el espíritu de una política del suelo moderna. Los datos sobre ciudades latinoamericanas existen, pero están fragmentados y no están estandarizados.
La mejor manera de construir un catastro multifinalitario es integrando todas las instituciones públicas y privadas que están trabajando a nivel de parcela, y desarrollando un identificador único que defina las normas para las bases de datos alfanuméricas y cartográficas. El concepto es muy simple y claro, pero su ejecución no lo es. Para alcanzar este objetivo es necesario que los administradores, técnicos y ciudadanos comprendan el potencial del catastro para mejorar las prácticas de gestión de la tierra y la calidad de vida en zonas urbanas. Muchas veces hay soluciones simples que ayudan a resolver problemas complejos como los presentados por los sistemas catastrales.
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In October 2007 Peking University Provost Lin Jianhua and I signed an agreement to establish the joint Lincoln Institute of Land Policy–Peking University Center for Urban Developmentand Land Policy. Lincoln Institute and Peking University established this joint center to provide support for education, training, and research in urban economics, land policy and management, property taxation, local government finance, and urban and regional planning. The mission of the center is to study land, urban, and fiscal policies; to disseminate results from its studies and research; and to facilitate education, training, policy analysis, and research involving scholars, policy makers, and practitioners.
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To enhance the Lincoln Institute’s commitment to building research capacity on international land policy issues, the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean initiated an expanded effort in 2006 to support research in that region. Since then the Lincoln Institute has issued annual public requests for research proposals that set out the criteria used to evaluate the proposals and a set of priority thematic topics, normally related to land markets, local public finance, and urban development. This year’s priorities include implementation and impacts of land use regulations; land-based instruments to finance urban development; land markets; and urban form.
Most of those who submit research proposals are affiliated with academic institutions throughout Latin America. Other applicants are typically practitioners from government entities, nongovernmental organizations, and private consultancies, as well as scholars working on Latin American themes at universities outside the region. About two-thirds of the proposals submitted and funded are from researchers having no prior affiliation with our Latin America Program, which is consistent with one objective of the research program—to widen the network of those studying land policy issues in the region.
The average size of research project funding has increased over time from around $10,000 in 2006 to about $26,000 at present. Some projects that involve extensive field work to support empirically based research have received larger amounts. Over time the program has also become more competitive, with the number of applications growing from 90 in the first year to 150 currently.
The priority topics and selection criteria are designed to encourage empirical studies, and the 18-month funding cycle allows time for data collection, analysis, and preparation of a final report. Lincoln Institute staff provide technical assistance to many researchers as they finalize their research designs and carry out their work. The participants are also invited to a methods workshop at the beginning of each research project cycle to review survey instrument and sample design, multivariate statistical analysis, experimental methods, and the use of geographic information systems.
At the end of each research project cycle all participants discuss each others’ draft papers at a research seminar. Both the methods workshop and research seminar are highly valued by the researchers, and the events have been offered in Colombia, Argentina, and Costa Rica to facilitate access from different parts of the region. Other training courses offered by the Latin America Program, such as those on urban economics and land market analysis, are also often relevant for those carrying out these research projects.
Selected final research reports are posted as working papers on the Lincoln Institute Web site. Currently 33 final papers are available and another 15 are in process. Many of these papers are downloadable in both English and either Spanish or Portuguese. In addition, seven of the completed research papers have been summarized as Land Lines articles, making their results accessible to a wide audience. This April issue presents one such report on home values in Mexico, and announces the completion of a CD-ROM that compiles more than 80 Land Lines articles that have been translated into Spanish under the title Perspectivas Urbanas.
This research program complements another long-standing Latin America Program initiative that provides support for students working on dissertation and masters theses. The graduate student program is also competitive and based on open requests for proposals. In the past two years, the Lincoln Institute has taken steps to increase the coordination between these two research support initiatives, particularly by coordinating the priority topics and harmonizing the selection criteria. By supporting both emerging graduates and more experienced researchers, these initiatives are developing an extensive network of capable analysts who can advance knowledge about land policy and its consequences in Latin America.
The request for research proposals in 2010 will be posted on the Lincoln Institute’s Web site and distributed electronically by email to those in the region who have registered on our Web site. See page 28 of this Land Lines issue for additional information.
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Sustaining local communities will require mechanisms to envision and plan for the future and to engage residents in the process. Scenario planning is an increasingly effective way to address these efforts, and Western Lands and Communities, the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy’s joint venture with the Sonoran Institute, is working to advance the necessary tools.
Scenario Planning to Address Uncertainty
Land use decisions and planning efforts are critical as communities look 20 to 50 years into the future to guide policy choices and public investments that are sustainable across economic, social, and environmental dimensions. As uncertainty increases and available resources decrease, it becomes ever more important to consider the full range of emerging conditions and to strive to ensure our ability to respond to those changes, adopt policies, and pursue investments that will be resilient across a variety of potential futures.
Key areas of uncertainty include population and demographic changes, economic trends, climatic variability and change, resource costs and availability, land markets, housing preferences, housing affordability, and the fiscal health of local governments. Simultaneous with increasing uncertainty and decreasing resources, or perhaps in part because of them, decision makers face conflicting perspectives on desired futures and on the role of government in providing services and infrastructure as well as regulation and planning.
Increased polarization means that more civic engagement and an informed and supportive public are needed to ensure stable policies and adequate investments in a community’s future. Scenario planning offers a mechanism to address these needs and issues of potential uncertainty and conflict. Fortunately, as the scope and complexity of planning and the demand for broader engagement have increased, advances in computing power and public access to technology are making new and more powerful tools available.
The Lincoln Institute has a long history of supporting the development of planning tools and publishing the results (Hopkins and Zapata 2007; Campoli and MacLean 2007; Brail 2008; Kwartler and Longo 2008; Condon, Cavens, and Miller 2009). This article covers lessons learned from the use of scenario planning tools in several projects undertaken by Western Lands and Communities (WLC), as well as mechanisms to expand their application.
Superstition Vistas
Superstition Vistas is a 275-square-mile expanse of vacant state-owned trust land on the urbanizing edge of the Phoenix metropolitan area (figure 1). State trust lands such as this site in Arizona are key to future growth patterns because the state owns 60 percent of the available land in the path of development. Colorado and New Mexico to a lesser degree face similar opportunities with their state trust lands (Culp, Laurenzi, and Tuell 2006). Creative thinking about the future of Superstition Vistas began to gain momentum in 2003, and the Lincoln Institute, through the WLC joint venture, was an early proponent of these efforts (Propst 2008).
Initial WLC objectives for Superstition Vistas scenario planning included capacity building, tool development, and opportunities to catalyze a planning process. More specifically, we sought to:
WLC, along with regional partnerships, neighboring jurisdictions, the regional electric and water utility, two private hospital providers, and a local mining company, formed the Superstition Vistas (SV) Steering Committee to advance the planning effort, secure funding, and hire a consulting team. The consultants, working with the committee over a three-year period, conducted extensive public outreach and values research, assembled data on Superstition Vistas, developed and refined a series of alternative land use scenarios for the development of a community of 1 million residents, evaluated the impacts of the different scenarios, and produced a composite scenario for the site.
The Arizona State Land Department (the landowner) adapted the consultants’ work to prepare a draft conceptual plan for Superstition Vistas in May 2011 and submitted a proposed comprehensive plan amendment to Pinal County. The county is now considering the proposed amendment and its Board of Supervisors is expected to act in late 2011.
Sustainability Lessons
The scenario analysis, utilizing enhancements supported by WLC, identified the most important factors in shaping development patterns and potential conflicts among desired outcomes (figure 2). The inclusion of individual building and infrastructure costs for the alternative scenarios facilitated examining the sensitivity of varying these key factors and the cost effectiveness of four increasing levels of energy and water efficiency in each building type.
The scenarios also examined the impact of urban form on vehicle miles traveled (VMT). Scenario model outputs included land use indicators, energy and water use, VMT, carbon emissions, and construction costs. This analysis revealed the “low-hanging fruit” for sustainability improvements. The consulting team, working with the Steering Committee, identified a number of lessons that illustrate the value of scenario planning tools and can be applied to other efforts to design more sustainable and efficient urban areas (Superstition Vistas Consulting Team 2011).
1. Create mixed-use centers to reduce travel times, energy use, and the carbon footprint. Mixed-use centers along public transportation routes and close to homes and neighborhoods are one of the most effective ways to reduce travel times, energy use, and the resulting carbon footprint. Smaller homes, more compact forms of urban development, and multimodal transportation systems all create similar benefits (figure 3). However, the scenario modeling for Superstition Vistas demonstrated that mixed-use centers would be substantially more important than increased density in affecting transportation choices, energy use, and the carbon footprint.
2. Foster upfront investments and high-quality jobs to catalyze economic success. A strong local economy and a diverse balance of nearby jobs, housing, and shops are critical for a sustainable community, especially when high-quality jobs are provided at the beginning of development. Significant upfront public investment and public-private partnerships can supply critical infrastructure and have an enormous impact on shaping development and increasing the value of state trust land. State owned trust land could also provide unique opportunities for patient capital, with enhanced trust land management authorities providing access to resources for upfront capital investment and the ability to recapture these investments when the land is sold or leased later at a higher value.
3. Provide multimodal transportation infrastructure and regional connections to facilitate efficient growth. Another critical step is determining how to phase transportation improvements as the region grows and the market can support increased services. Phased components may include buses first, then Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), with rights-of-way set aside for eventual commuter or light-rail corridors. Identifying and building multimodal transportation corridors and infrastructure prior to sales for residential and commercial development should establish the cohesiveness of the entire area and enable the evolution to more capital-intensive transportation infrastructure as the community matures.
4. Design efficient buildings that save water and energy resources and reduce the community’s carbon footprint. Incorporating construction costs and return on investment (ROI) data in resource planning allows for financial feasibility and cost-benefit calculations. The consulting team modeled four levels of water and energy use (baseline, good, better, best) for each scenario and building type. Results demonstrated that investments in energy efficiency would be better spent on residential than commercial and industrial buildings. An additional finding showed that building centralized renewable power generation may be a better investment than extreme conservation.
5. Offer housing choices that meet the needs of a diverse population. Ensuring a viable community means meeting the needs of all potential residents with a broad variety of development types and prices that local workers can afford and that allow for adjustments under future market conditions.
6. Incorporate flexibility to respond to changing circumstances. A challenge for large-scale master plans that will take shape in multiple phases over 50 years or more is how to plan so the development itself can evolve and even redevelop over time. Plan implementation needs to include mechanisms to limit future NIMBY (not in my back yard) problems for necessary infill and redevelopment projects.
Procedural Lessons
The visioning process for Superstition Vistas involved planning a completely new city or region of communities in a vacant area with a single public landowner and no existing population. Given the recent economic downturn, as well as the limited capacity of the state agency to bring land to market, development of this area will likely be postponed for a number of years. Despite these particular conditions, procedural lessons learned in the project to date are relevant to other long-term and large-scale efforts, and to the expanded use of scenario planning for community decision making in general.
Agreed-upon procedures and planning processes become increasingly important as the planning and development time period grows and the number of stakeholders increases. Significant changes in participants, perspectives, and external factors, such as the recent collapse of the development economy, should be expected in any long-term, multiparty project. Such challenges need to be considered and incorporated into project tasks.
1. Design for change. Long-term projects need to accommodate changes in stakeholders, decision makers, and even political perspectives during the course of planning and implementation. Projects would benefit enormously from anticipating such changes, agreeing on mechanisms to transfer knowledge to new participants, establishing certain criteria and decisions that new stakeholders would be expected to follow, understanding how to deal with political or market conditions that will change, and building resiliency for such factors into the alternative scenarios themselves.
2. Consider governance. This is an issue for planning and implementation efforts and for the political decision-making structure of a new community. In building a new city it is important to consider how to create a governance system capable of implementing a consistent, comprehensive vision for a community that does not yet exist.
3. Incorporate new community designs into local and regional comprehensive plans. It is also critical to consider how a project at the scale of Superstition Vistas, with up to 1 million residents and a buildout plan of 50 years or more, can be incorporated into the framework of a typical county comprehensive plan. Scenarios and visions must reflect ideas and plans that local jurisdictions will be politically willing and administratively able to incorporate into their planning processes.
4. Phase development. Communities need to establish mechanisms that allow the adoption of a long-term buildout vision and then incorporate a series of flexible and adaptable phased plans to implement that vision in appropriate stages.
5. Plan for market changes. Market conditions, housing preferences, and employment opportunities will evolve, and large-scale projects with creative and compelling visions may even create their own demand. No one knows what future markets may offer, so consideration of alternative markets and adaptable community designs are critical. Projected housing mixes and estimates of development absorption need to be flexible and not based only on current preferences and trends.
6. Connect to common values. Demonstrating how development proposals connect to common visions and values that are shared and stable over time is also important. For Superstition Vistas, values such as an opportunity for healthy lifestyles and choices for residents across the socioeconomic spectrum were found to be broadly accepted. Planners also need to recognize values that are more controversial or may be transient and likely to change.
Challenges and Opportunities
The WLC experience in planning for Superstition Vistas has been successful in several respects. The community came together through the Steering Committee to develop a consensus vision that represented multijurisdictional cooperation around sustainable “smart” growth. Neighboring communities, at the request of the state land commissioner, deferred any consideration of annexation. In addition, the Arizona State Land Department developed a plan for a geographic scale, time horizon, and level of comprehensiveness well beyond anything attempted previously. However, the proposed comprehensive plan amendment for Superstition Vistas is at best a first step toward a vision for a community of up to 1 million people.
The Arizona State Land Department has been unable, at least so far, to push the envelope very far on new and more creative ways to conceptualize large-scale developments that could enhance the economic value of state trust lands and improve regional urban form. The recent collapse of land and housing markets throughout the country has also impacted this project and local perceptions of future growth potential. Since the overall effort to conceptualize and implement development plans for Superstition Vistas is just beginning, initial on-the-ground development is not expected for at least a decade. There will be multiple opportunities to build on these planning efforts to bring bolder and more comprehensive visions forward as the real estate economy recovers and the land becomes ripe for development.
Scenario planning and effective visualizations become both more important and more challenging to achieve when conducting larger and longer-term visioning exercises. Visualizations that provide compelling depictions of activity centers and higher-density, mixed-use neighborhoods can help to gain public acceptance. Effective mechanisms are also needed to convey to current participants that the planning process is imagining community characteristics and housing and lifestyle preferences for their grandchildren or great-grandchildren many years in the future.
As noted earlier, upfront investments in transportation, economic development, education, and utility services can significantly shape a community, serve as a catalyst for higher-level employment, and earn high returns. To achieve this potential, mechanisms are needed to facilitate these investments, whether on private lands or state trust lands. Continued work on the contributory value of land conservation, infrastructure investment, planning, and ecosystem services, as well as the integration of this information into scenario planning, would greatly aid efforts to address uncertainty and advance community sustainability.
Other Projects and Lessons Learned
WLC conducted three additional demonstration projects to further enhance scenario planning tools and apply them in different situations.
Gallatin County, Montana
Sonoran Institute staff worked with Montana State University (MSU) to engage local stakeholders in a workshop where each of four teams produced scenarios for concentrating projected growth within the currently developed “triangle” region of Bozeman, Belgrade, and Four Corners. This effort successfully integrated Envision Tomorrow scenario planning with housing unit projections from the Sonoran Institute’s Growth Model and demonstrated the value of ROI tools as a reality check on proposed land use and building types. The project also demonstrated the value of scenario planning to local experts.
Lessons learned include recognizing that (1) for many participants working with paper maps was more intuitive that the touch screen technology we had employed; (2) additional information on land characteristics, such as soil productivity and habitat values, should be used in preparing growth scenarios; and (3) more effective techniques are needed to visualize the density and design of different land use types, as well as to incorporate political and market realities that are not typically captured with scenario planning tools.
Products from this Montana project will include the creation of a library of regionally appropriate building types for use with ROI and scenario modeling and a report examining the costs and benefits, including sustainability impacts, of directing future growth to the triangle area of Gallatin Valley. With WLC support MSU has been able to incorporate the use of scenario planning tools in its graduate program.
Garfield County, Colorado
Sonoran Institute’s Western Colorado Legacy Area office, with support from the Lincoln Institute, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and other local contributors, utilized the Envision Tomorrow tool in a new way to advance implementation of previously adopted plans calling for mixed-use infill and redevelopment in target growth areas. This project focused on stakeholder education regarding the mechanisms necessary to implement recently adopted comprehensive plans calling for town-centered development, rather than on scenario generation for a comprehensive plan.
Examination of policy and market feasibility for redevelopment in downtown Rifle, Colorado, was one of three separate efforts undertaken. The City of Rifle project successfully utilized an ROI tool to identify financial and regulatory factors that could impact revitalization efforts and engaged the key parties necessary for implementation, including property owners, developers, realtors, planning commissioners, local officials, state transportation representatives, and local staff.
Among the lessons learned from this project was the importance of grounding bold visions with market reality. For example, previous planning efforts in Rifle had focused on six-to-eight-story mixed-use buildings, but in the current market even three-to-four-story projects are not considered feasible (figure 4c). Most attention now is given to two-story mixed-use projects and townhomes. Visualizations for an underutilized parcel in the center of town illustrated the type of one-story option that may be most feasible for initial commercial development (figure 4b). Constraints related to parking requirements and high minimum lot coverage requirements were also identified as limits on investment. In addition to pinpointing changes in Rifle’s building code, these findings spurred discussion about the role of public-private partnerships in catalyzing downtown development.
Morongo Basin, California
This area of high open space and wildlife habitat values between Joshua Tree National Park and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Southern California may be impacted by spillover from regional growth. This project with the Morongo Basin Open Space Group involves an innovative effort to link results from the ongoing conservation priority-setting efforts with both a GIS tool to analyze and predict how land use patterns impact wildlife habitat and the scenario planning capability of Envision Tomorrow.
We are evaluating the environmental impacts of the current and potential alternative development patterns and location-specific planning and land use options. The tools being developed for this effort will be useful to land trusts throughout the country that are interested in engaging partners on local and regional planning issues and incorporating larger landscape conservation and wildlife habitat goals into their projects.
Open Source Planning Tools
Western Lands and Communities has recently been focusing on efforts to develop open source planning tools as a mechanism to increase the use of scenario planning. Key factors that hinder their use include: (1) the cost and complexity of the tools themselves; (2) the cost and availability of data; (3) a lack of standardization, making integration of tools and data difficult; and (4) proprietary tools that may be difficult to adapt to local conditions and may impede innovation.
Proponents of open source modeling tools believe open and standardized coding will facilitate increased transparency and interoperability between models, ultimately resulting in faster innovation and greater utilization. As a result of our work with Envision Tomorrow on the Superstition Vistas project, WLC and other members of an open source planning tools group are continuing to advance scenario planning tools and pursue the promise of open source tools that can foster sustainable communities in many more locations.
About the Author
Jim Holway directs Western Lands and Communities, the Lincoln Institute’s joint venture with the Sonoran Institute, based in Phoenix, Arizona. He was previously assistant director of the Arizona Department of Water Resources and a professor of practice at Arizona State University.
References
Propst, Luther. 2008. A model for sustainable development in Arizona’s Sun Corridor. Land Lines 20(3).
Superstition Vistas Consulting Team. 2011. Superstition Vistas: Final report and strategic actions. www.superstition-vistas.org
Lincoln Institute Publications
Brail, Richard K. 2008. Planning support systems for cities and regions.
Campoli, Julie, and Alex S. MacLean. 2007. Visualizing density.
Condon, Patrick M., Duncan Cavens, and Nicole Miller. 2009. Urban planning tools for climate change mitigation.
Culp, Peter W., Andy Laurenzi, and Cynthia C. Tuell. 2006. State trust lands in the West: Fiduciary duty in a changing landscape.
Hopkins, Lewis D., and Marisa A. Zapata. 2007. Engaging the future: Forecasts, scenarios, plans, and projects.
Kwartler, Michael, and Gianni Longo. 2008. Visioning and visualization: People, pixels, and plans.
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Tao Ran es profesor en la Escuela de Economía de la Universidad de Renmin en China, y director del Centro Chino de Economía y Gobierno Público de dicha universidad. También es senior fellow no residente del Instituto Brookings. Su campo de especialización se centra en la urbanización de China y en la economía política de la transición económica, la reforma del sistema de registro de suelo y hogares, y los gobiernos locales y las finanzas públicas en la zona rural de China. Sus varias investigaciones han aparecido en las revistas academicas Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Development Studies, Land Economics, Urban Studies, Political Studies, China Quarterly y Land Use Policy.
El Dr. Tao recibió su PhD en economía en la Universidad de Chicago en 2002. Desde hace tiempo es fellow de investigación en el Centro de Desarrollo Urbano y Política del Suelo de la Universidad de Pekín (PKU)-Instituto Lincoln, y fue previamente un fellow Shaw de investigación en economía china del Instituto de Estudios Chinos de la Universidad de Oxford. Con fondos de PKU-Instituto Lincoln y de otras agencias, como la Fundación Nacional de Ciencias de China, lideró un equipo de investigación y comenzó una encuesta amplia sobre los migrantes urbanos y agricultores desposeídos en 12 ciudades de cuatro áreas urbanizadas principales de China: el delta del río Yangtzé (provincias de Jiangsu y Zhejiang), del delta del río Perla (provincia de Guangdong), la región de Chengdu-Chongqing (provincia de Sichuan y municipalidad de Chongqing) y el área de la bahía de Bohai (provincias de Hebei y Shandong). También está trabajando en un proyecto piloto de modelos de revitalización de pueblos urbanos en la municipalidad de Shenzhen y el delta del río Perla.
Land Lines: ¿Por qué es tan importante el estudio de economía política en China y su transición para el futuro del país?
Tao Ran: Como consecuencia de un crecimiento de casi el diez por ciento en las últimas tres décadas, China se ha convertido en la estrella brillante de la economía global del siglo XXI. La gente se maravilla de la transformación exitosa de un país del tercer mundo en la base manufacturera más grande del mundo y la segunda economía global, una evolución que sacó de la pobreza a 450 millones de personas. Sin embargo, a medida que China crece, enfrenta una brecha cada vez mayor de desigualdad de ingresos, corrupción y contaminación graves, e injusticia social que ha dejado a cientos de millones de migrantes temporales sin acceso a servicios públicos aceptables, y decenas de millones de agricultores desposeídos y mal pagados en transición a una economía urbana industrializada.
Mi investigación explora las fuentes institucionales del crecimiento rápido de China en las últimas décadas, así como las implicaciones, tanto negativas como positivas, de China —una autocracia efectiva y orientada al crecimiento, con grandes inversiones en infraestructura e industrias, exportaciones masivas de bienes manufacturados y políticas selectivas de intervención gubernamental e industrial— como un modelo alternativo para el mundo en vías de desarrollo. Creo que es esencial poder predecir lo que va a ocurrir en China en un futuro cercano, porque tendrá consecuencias importantes para el mundo en vías de desarrollo.
Land Lines: ¿Por qué cree que es importante estudiar el registro de suelo y hogares? ¿Qué nos dicen estos estudios sobre el estado actual de la estructura socioeconómica de China?
Tao Ran: China se encuentra inmersa en una revolución urbana, con un volumen masivo de migración del campo a la ciudad cada año de las últimas tres décadas. Alrededor de 200 millones de migrantes rurales están trabajando y viviendo en ciudades chinas. No obstante, bajo el persistente sistema hukou (registro de hogares), una mayoría de migrantes que están registrados en su lugar de origen se consideran “foráneos” o “población temporal” en sus nuevas ciudades de residencia. No tienen acceso a beneficios de asistencia social, viviendas públicas subsidiadas o escuelas públicas urbanas.
Sus dificultades se agravan por los patrones altamente distorsionados del uso del suelo. Normalmente, cuando los países se urbanizan, menos del 20 por ciento de los suelos de utilización nueva se usan para manufactura, dejando la mayoría del territorio para viviendas de la población migrante. Bajo el sistema actual de requisa y arriendo de suelo en China, los gobiernos locales arriendan todos los años alrededor del 40 por ciento de los suelos de utilización nueva para construir parques industriales, dejando sólo entre el 30 y 40 por ciento del área para fines residenciales.
Los sistemas vigentes del uso del suelo y del registro de hogares en China contribuyen asimismo a generar varias estructuras socioeconómicas duales. Además de la dicotomía sobradamente conocida ciudad-campo, también hay una estructura dual de residentes urbanos permanentes versus migrantes. Otra dualidad separa a los propietarios de los inquilinos urbanos, que han acumulado mucha menos riqueza. Como un 90 por ciento de los propietarios son residentes permanentes, y el 95 por ciento de los inquilinos son migrantes, estas estructuras duales crean una sociedad muy dividida.
Land Lines: ¿Qué problemas del uso del suelo enfrentará China en las próximas décadas?
Tao Ran: Muchas ciudades han construido parques industriales, o “fábricas estilo jardín”, que hacen un uso muy ineficiente del suelo. Las empresas industriales arriendan suelo a un precio extremadamente bajo y usan sólo una parte del mismo, dejando otras áreas sin desarrollar o asignadas para proyectos verdes a gran escala. Los gobiernos locales ofrecen poco suelo residencial y comercial, para poder maximizar sus ganancias, lo que produce mercados de suelo comercial/residencial con poca oferta, generando burbujas de precios en el sector inmobiliario. El rápido aumento de los precios de las viviendas urbanas y la formación de burbujas inmobiliarias a lo largo de la última década ha hecho imposible para la vasta mayoría de las poblaciones rurales migrantes poder acceder al inventario de viviendas en las ciudades. De hecho, incluso las personas que ingresan en la fuerza laboral con títulos universitarios descubren que actualmente los precios de las viviendas están fuera de su alcance. Claramente, el acceso económico a la vivienda se ha convertido en el principal desafío que hoy día enfrenta China.
Las consecuencias de la crisis financiera mundial de 2008 tuvieron un enorme impacto en China. El paquete de estímulo fiscal y financiero implementado por el gobierno central benefició principalmente a los gobiernos locales, que continuaron invirtiendo en todavía más parques industriales. Por lo tanto, la economía china ha experimentado un exceso de capacidad en infraestructura industrial y bienes de manufactura, como también burbujas más grandes en los precios de las viviendas en todos los niveles urbanos. Esta trayectoria es menos sustentable aún si se considera que China ya tiene un exceso de capacidad manufacturera y ha sufrido burbujas inmobiliarias antes de 2008. Dada la prác-tica éticamente dudosa de pedir dinero prestado a bancos del estado, y la ilusión fiscal de que la burbuja inmobiliaria continuará para siempre, las deudas de los gobiernos locales han llegado al nivel sin precedentes de 10 billones de RMB, la mitad de los cuales se acumuló después de 2009. Si no se reforman los sistemas de gobierno del suelo, el registro hukou y el financiamiento público local, la economía china se desacelerará de forma muy significativa. En el peor de los casos, la burbuja inmobiliaria explotará, lo que causará una crisis financiera y económica a gran escala.
Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son algunas de las consecuencias políticas de su investigación sobre gobiernos locales y finanzas públicas en las zonas rurales de China?
Tao Ran: China tiene que reformar sus sistemas de registro de suelo y hogares, para que los migrantes puedan acceder a viviendas económicas y servicios aceptables de educación pública en las ciudades. El suelo ha jugado un papel preponderante en el modelo de crecimiento de China en los últimos 15 años, pero también es responsable de los problemas económicos actuales. Desde mi punto de vista, un paquete de reformas centrado en el suelo y la urbanización es la mejor opción para crear un equilibrio entre las tasas de importación y exportación del país, para generar una enorme demanda interna y aliviar al mismo tiempo el problema de exceso de capacidad que aflige a muchas industrias chinas.
Yo propongo una estrategia gradual, que apunte a construir un sistema dual más equitativo. Bajo el sistema de regulación del suelo actual, la propiedad del suelo se divide entre urbana y rural; y mientras que los gobiernos urbanos tienen la autoridad para asignar áreas rurales para desarrollo urbano, los gobiernos rurales no tienen los derechos recíprocos. Esta discriminación ha privado a los residentes rurales de sus derechos de desarrollo inmobiliario, y ha llevado a la economía china por una trayectoria destructiva.
Una liberalización total, sin embargo, puede hacer explotar las burbujas inmobiliarias existentes, al ofrecer al mercado un gran volumen de suelo rural. Para reducir esta preocupación por parte de los gobiernos locales y de los propietarios de viviendas urbanas, es posible que China tenga que crear un mercado de propiedades en alquiler para los 200 millones de migrantes rurales que ya viven y trabajan en las ciudades. La mitad de ellos vive actualmente en dormitorios provistos por sus empleadores, y la otra mitad reside en viviendas construidas ilegalmente en pueblos urbanos sin buena infraestructura o acceso a servicios públicos, como educación para los hijos de los migrantes. Propongo una reforma que permitiría a las comunidades rurales en pueblos suburbanos de las ciudades que reciben a los migrantes que conviertan su suelo no agrícola en un mercado de vivienda urbano, bajo una condición: En los primeros 10 a 15 años, sólo podrían construir propiedades para ofrecer en régimen de alquiler. Después del período de transición, estas viviendas obtendrían derechos plenos y se podrían vender directamente en el mercado inmobiliario.
Land Lines: ¿Cuáles son las ventajas de este diseño?
Tao Ran: Al confinar inicialmente el suelo rural desarrollable al mercado de alquiler, se crea un colchón para el mercado inmobiliario existente y se evitan los pánicos bursátiles y que explote la burbuja inmobiliaria. La fusión posterior de estos dos mercados, sin embargo, enviaría a los especuladores una señal confiable de que los precios de las viviendas residenciales no crecerán más, y el gobierno central podría ir eliminando las regulaciones estrictas sobre el mercado inmobiliario impuestas desde 2010 para controlar la burbuja inmobiliaria. Este paquete de reformas contribuiría a un crecimiento saludable del mercado de vivienda. Más aún, el otorgamiento de derechos de desarrollo inmobiliario a las comunidades rurales –si bien restringidos durante el período de transición– abriría un canal legal para solicitar préstamos para el desarrollo inmobiliario.
Esta oportunidad generaría un auge en la construcción de viviendas en pueblos urbanos y áreas suburbanas, y estimularía la industria de la construcción, que tiene un exceso importante de capacidad. A diferencia de la burbuja de vivienda actual, este tipo de desarrollo inmobiliario es más beneficioso socialmente y económicamente sustentable. Los residentes rurales, particularmente aquellos que viven cerca de los centros urbanos, se beneficiarían directamente. Este crecimiento en el mercado de propiedades de alquiler también proporcionará viviendas asequibles para cientos de millones de trabajadores migrantes, lo que les permitiría que se asentaran en las ciudades de forma permanente. La urbanización tiene el potencial de distanciar la economía china del modelo impulsado por inversión.
Land Lines: ¿Cuál es la clave para el éxito de esta reforma?
Tao Ran: La actitud de los gobiernos locales es fundamental. Su preocupación sobre cómo generar ingresos es perfectamente legítima, y el paquete de reformas tiene que resolverla. Bajo el sistema actual, los gobiernos locales tienen demasiadas gastos, y no cuentan con ingresos adecuadas. Después de la reforma, tendrían un poder limitado de requisa de suelo, y se desharían de la gran cantidad de aranceles por arriendo de suelo y préstamos bancarios asociados con dicho poder. A largo plazo, las municipalidades deberían recaudar impuestos sobre la propiedad para generar una fuente estable de ingresos para el financiamiento público local. Dada la fuerte resistencia de los residentes adinerados y políticamente poderosos de las ciudades que han introducido programas piloto de impuestos sobre la propiedad, no es práctico esperar que este nuevo impuesto entre en vigor en poco tiempo.
Creo que otra fuente no explotada por los gobiernos locales es el suelo industrial subutilizado. De acuerdo con varios informes, el coeficiente de edificabilidad en los parques industriales es sólo de 0,3 a 0,4, aun en áreas desarrolladas de China. Si se negocia una reorganización, es posible duplicar el desarrollo del suelo y convertir parte del suelo industrial para uso residencial y comercial. Nuestras estimaciones muestran que los gobiernos locales saldrían beneficiados al renunciar a la potestad de requisa del suelo, y podrían usar estos ingresos para pagar deudas y evitar una crisis financiera.
En la etapa actual de desarrollo, ninguna reforma de la economía china será fácil. Nadie se debería hacer ilusiones sobre una solución rápida. Pero el paquete de reformas de mercado dual propuesto brinda una esperanza de alentar el consumo interno y aliviar el problema de exceso de capacidad en muchos sectores. Un factor particularmente favorable para esta reforma es el énfasis que ha puesto el nuevo gobierno en la urbanización. El primer ministro Li Keniana ha invertido muchos años en este tema y parece tener un interés genuino en lograr soluciones. Esta propuesta puede proporcionar una hoja de ruta realista para dichas reformas.
Land Lines: ¿Qué lecciones puede darnos China?
Tao Ran: El modelo chino genera crecimiento de forma efectiva. También produce varias consecuencias negativas, como el endeudamiento excesivo por el uso del suelo, los conflictos sociales debido a la requisa de suelo, daños medioambientales y burbujas inmobiliarias que suponen una carga para la población urbana. La lección china es que el gobierno es esencial para que un país crezca, pero ese mismo gobierno puede exagerar las cosas y, a largo plazo, generar distorsiones que dañan en última instancia la sostenibilidad de la economía y la sociedad.
